Former president of Mauritania will get 5 years for corruption

A Mauritanian court docket handed down a five-year jail sentence to the nation’s former President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz after discovering him responsible of cash laundering and self-enrichment, his attorneys stated Tuesday.

The Monday verdict wraps up a uncommon corruption trial in West Africa and closes a chapter within the lengthy trajectory of a strongman who helped lead two coups earlier than serving two phrases as president and changing into a counterterrorism accomplice to Western nations together with the U.S.

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Within the landmark 11-month trial, Aziz and different high Mauritanian officers had been accused of siphoning cash from the nation to counterpoint themselves. It marked a uncommon occasion through which an African chief was tried for corruption, although Aziz’s legal professionals lengthy framed the trial as a matter of score-settling between him and present President Mohamed Ould Cheikh Ghazouani.

“This is a political verdict whose ultimate objective is to deprive the president of civic rights,” protection lawyer Taleb Khyar advised The Associated Press.

Then-President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz of Mauritania seems on the Arab Financial and Social Growth Summit, in Beirut, Lebanon, Jan. 20, 2019. (AP Picture/Bilal Hussein, File)

The 2 males had been lengthy allies, however their relations soured after Ghazouani changed Aziz as president in 2019 within the nation’s first peaceable switch of presidency since independence.

Ghazouani and Aziz fought over Aziz’s makes an attempt to take over a serious political occasion after leaving workplace. A parliamentary fee subsequently opened a corruption inquiry towards Aziz and 11 different defendants in 2020. In Monday’s verdict, the court docket cleared 4 former authorities ministers — together with two prime ministers — of the identical expenses.

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The court docket ordered the confiscation of Aziz’s illegally acquired property. It dropped a number of expenses, together with embezzlement and hurt to the general public good.